Hi WW,
I recently spoke with an agent who has been reading my novel and suggesting some revisions and areas of plot and character that need work. Basically, one of the points he has raised regards 'the sense of place' within the book (it is set in south London). He thinks it needs fleshing out.

How would you go about enriching the location and geography of your work? Do you literally pound the streets taking photographs and looking at maps (he suggested following Rankin's lead) or does your approach lie in the imagination, the evocation of a sense of place rather than a photographic recollection.

I'm a tad stuck on this point so any help greatly appreciated!

Luke

Do you literally pound the streets taking photographs

Absolutely I did this very thing in London last year, and I think my novel is far better as a result. The next one is partly set in Jerusalem, and now I want to go there too. I think there is a lot you can get away with using imagination, sure, but for that ring of truth, your research should include at least a visit to the place you're writing about - and particularly if if it a well known locale.

JB

Luke, I think to evoke a sense of place it makes all the difference to go there and experience it in some way. Maps, guidebooks, Google Image searches all help, but the risk is that without the particular experience you generalise. And the reader gets a general - i.e. dead - impression, rather than feeling the pulse of immediate life. It's amazing how many pavements aren't grey, how many cafés aren't the kind you'd expect for the area, who you see in which parks, what modernist sculpture you see when peering down into the area of a Victorian terrace. And who would have guessed that out of a train window you could see an ancient painted-on-brick sign for 'The Theatrical Hosiery Company' or 'West Glamorgan Halal Meat', or that the old balconies in Bilbao and San Sebastian are glassed in against the Atlantic weather?

If taking photographs or notes helps you look harder and remember better, then do that. If it's distracting, then don't, just open your eyes, nose and ears, touch walls and tree trunks, smell alleys, eavesdrop in pubs. Drop by the local library or anywhere that has an exhibition of local photographs, buy the South London Advertiser.

What I do then is go home, look through my material and put it away. Think of you stocking your mind and memory, not gathering material to use directly as a journalist would. When you come to revise, you'll find that the right, rich, odd, immediacies about the place swim up to the surface, as they would if you were using your childhood home or somewhere else you know really well. That way you avoid the risk of that subset of info-dumping known as guidebook-dumping. You know the kind of thing: the exciting thriller which ends one chapter on a cliff-hanger, and starts the next chapter with, 'The Island of St Lucia is guitar-shaped, with magnificent hardwood forests clothing the rocky slopes above the bustling capital city of...'

Ugh! (And guaranteed rejection).

Emma

<Added>

By going there you also avoid the kind of trap an American thriller fell into when setting a car chase in London. If he'd bothered to come, he would have discovered that we drive on the left...

I agree with JB.

My first novel was set in Paris and having lived there i knew it well - consequently, as i set chapters in different areas i was able to convey the settings through all the senses:

the smells of different areas (incense-burning markets, aromatic resaurants blowing smells along streets, musty tube stations)

the noises - traffic, people shouting, the tranquil garden areas, the bustle of Montmartre

the contrasting sights

the feel - cobbled streets underfoot, steep walkways,, windy exposed areas.

etc etc. Flesh out your location using all the senses.

Sammy

This is all really useful advice guys, thanks

When you come to revise, you'll find that the right, rich, odd, immediacies about the place swim up to the surface, as they would if you were using your childhood home or somewhere else you know really well.

This is what I need to do, just the right shades at the right time, and not a kind of dull travelogue. I guess good writing hits the right balances. Giving just enough and knowing when to hold off for the sake of the story.

Would you approach the sense of place in the same way you would a character, i.e. getting to know it well but not overdoing the details on the first meeting? A kind of drip-feed mentality?

Luke

getting to know it well but not overdoing the details on the first meeting

Yes. You need to decide what your MC would notice and when, which ought to help you control what you write and when... Everything you put in only deserves to be there if it's doing something more (revealing character, setting up a piece of plot, adding to a set of ideas or pattern of images) than just colouring in the scenery.

Emma

Great ideas there, Emma. I've never thought of taking photos and stuff as I always write about places I know well, but it could add an extra dimension.

Cath

I write fantasy so the locations are imaginary - but many based on/impressions of real places.

The term locations is quite apt as films often use multiple locations/interiors/ exteriors to create a place real or imagined - without adding in CGI and all the rest.

Yes, I've taken photos and trooped round places - not necessarily to recreate them in exact detail but as inspiration.

You know you're in trouble when you walk into a house and think - I like this hallway/ tiles/whatever - I could use this or write in a character trailing mud and blood across someone else's pale and improbably pristine floor.

Sarah

Taking photos is an excellent idea, I like that.

For me 'a sense of place' is how a location makes the character feel, and from these feelings descriptions flow (usually).

Dawn

I can empathise because, as a mainly nonfiction writer, I can only write about places I know. I've just posted a chapter of my novel set in South London to the Crime Writing group and as I was writing it I could see the places in my mind, and the characters moving in the places, even though the story is set in South London of thirty years ago. Of course, I can't say whether it's convincing, because I haven't submitted it for publication, but I know the process is one of reproducing what I remember rather than superimposing from research. I still had to do some research - at one point that characters go to a play and I had to check that particular play was on at dates when the story took place, but all the locations are as I remember them. So I agree you have to go there, to the actual locations, and take some notes because the notes will help imprint memories.

Good luck and I look forward to reading the book. Is it the one with the girl jumping from the bridge? I thought that was an excellent start.

Sheila

Part of my novel is set in Seattle. I've never been there but I spent a lot of time pouring over maps, googling different locations and picking the brains of my friends who had been there. Pick the areas where your action takes place and do what you can to learn about them. If you get the chance to pound the streets with a camera and notebook in hand all the better!

I think it can be important to get to know a place so that you do strike that balance between what seems authentic and what is clearly read from a travel guide. I've read many authors where the local geography is shoe-horned into the narrative and might as well be saying 'LOOK! I KNOW THERE'S A HOTEL HERE!'. As Emma's said, it's nice to write in the elements that your character or any normal person would notice and for that to really work you have to know a place and rely upon your own experiences.

As for photos - I use them all the time, it's possibly about 50% of the use of my camera. I don't just take shots of specific locations either; I'll shoot anything that looks like a good 'hook' or scene. Some of these are merely 'mood' shots, places and things that put me in mind of the story I'm writing.

What I DON'T tend to do is keep the locations entirely real. For example I might use 80% my home town and 20% somewhere else. It might be that I need a particular street that doesn't exist in my town so I'll juggle the reality a little.

This raises a question, which I'll post separately!

Jon

I remember there was a crime writer called HF Keating who wrote a very successful series of mystery stories set in India, with a comic detective hero called Inspector Ghote. Apparently he just worked with a street map. I'm not sure he could get away with it nowadays when so many people travel.

I feel I've seen so many films set in Seattle I could almost write a short story set there myself. San Francisco, even more so.

Films are a great resource, I think. As Sam Mendes said, the common image of Vietnam is Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam or Oliver Stone's Vietnam. Maybe for me Seattle is Nora Ephron's Seattle.

Sheila

Niniel, TMOL is set in Suffolk, Brussels and the north coast of Spain, and everyone agreed that the first two were vivid enough, but the last, which I'd written from a map and a guidebook and googling, was absolutely dead, and my characters might as well have been at Southend. I had to go there in the end. Thank goodness for EasyJet. Now, how do I get to Orkney...?

As Emma's said, it's nice to write in the elements that your character or any normal person would notice and for that to really work you have to know a place and rely upon your own experiences.

I think it's not just nice, it's essential. There shouldn't be a word in there that's just 'scene setting'. If it doesn't pass the acid two-jobs test, out with it.

Emma

My most recent book is a fantasy set under the ocean. As I can't swim, let alone scuba dive, this is a bit of a challenge. However, I lived next to the Pacific in California for 12 years and for the underwater sequences, I find playing the DVD of the Blue Planet with the sound down while I'm writing not only creates a mood for me but gives me wonderful images of sea creatures and their habitat. I try to use it sparingly however, more to get a mood and a feeling into the work. I also log onto the Monterey Aquarium webcams to watch live sharks, rays, sea otters on line.

Previously, I wrote Regency romances and for this I simply wandered the streets of Mayfair, (in a non-commercial way, although I got a lot of offers). Regency London is still right there.

Hilary